Using Internal Hard Drives In an External Enclosure?

David G. Smith

David G. Smith

Steak Knife Member
I want to set up an external enclosure that uses relatively inexpensive internal 3.5" hard disc drives for storage and editing. I am using an 8 core Mac Pro (2.26 Ghz). Any recommendations on hardware? What drives should I get? Any recommendations on enclosures? My Mac only has Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 ports, would you recommend another card to set up using the SATA connection? Any recommendations on cards? I will be grateful for any help. Thanks.
 
Since it's also for editing, you'll want sata. I always get what's cheapest on Ebay as far as drives and enclosures are concerned. People have opinions about this, of course, but I don't think most of them are very much different at all when the specs are the same.
 
+1 for e-sata.


Do you want just a single disk? (make sure you gat one with - at least - 7000rpm.
Brand doesn't matter so much, specs does - I have a lot of Samsung HDs and like them, other prefer Western digital, some think they are horrible.
Opinions... when they fail, any brand sucks. :) Maybe you should consider a housing with multiple discs. You can use them as single drives or span them to RAID0 or JBOD.
The housing is just a housing is just a housing - unless you are planning to work in the field/dessert/rain - any housing does the trick. Whatever you do, e-sata is the way to go IMHO.

Frank
 
I suggest that you look at a quad interface hard drive docking station. I use the fw800 connection, and I wish my iMac had e-sata input...
 
OWC - Other World Computing = Top Shelf
Enclosures, drives, memory, and more. Get on their mailing list and "Larry" will send you some specials.

Grant
 
+1 for esata, +1 for owc they are great. As for HDDs I buy from newegg. I use WD Caviar Black but am starting to switch to Hitachi enterprise drives which is what G-tech and others use.

If your not moving the drives around I would also suggest the external dock. We us a thermal take one and it works well. This is our setup:

Esata card - Sonnet Tempo E2P http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_e2p.html
Esata/usb dock - Thermaltake http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112
HDDs - Hitachi Ultrastar http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145420
Case for HDD when not in use - Hudzee http://www.hudzee.com/
 
connectivitygroup said:
+1 for esata, +1 for owc they are great. As for HDDs I buy from newegg. I use WD Caviar Black but am starting to switch to Hitachi enterprise drives which is what G-tech and others use.

If your not moving the drives around I would also suggest the external dock. We us a thermal take one and it works well. This is our setup:

Esata card - Sonnet Tempo E2P http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_e2p.html
Esata/usb dock - Thermaltake http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112
HDDs - Hitachi Ultrastar http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145420
Case for HDD when not in use - Hudzee http://www.hudzee.com/
Click to expand...

I just set up the system that you suggested. It is perfect for my needs and budget, right now. I went with a WD Caviar Black 1TB drive to start, for the price. I was really freaking out for a while as I was down to about 15 gigs of storage between my internal HD and external Firewire drives and did not have anything, really, backed up. I was worried about finding an inexpensive solution for storage. Having this system is a big load off of my mind now. Thanks again for all of the responses.
 
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